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Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 938 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
The Enneagram System - The Continuum of the Levels of Development - Ask Gramps

Thank you for joining us for our five days per week, wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 938 of our Trek and time for our Philosophy Friday series.  Each Friday we will ponder some of the basic truths and mysteries of life, and how they can impact us in creating our living legacy.  As we continue on this trek called life, sometimes we have questions about life, so our Friday trek is a time where we can ‘Ask Gramps.’   Gramps will answer questions that you would like to ask your dad or granddad, but for whatever reason, this is not possible.  No matter how old we are, I know that all of us would like the opportunity to ask dad or gramps questions about life in many areas.

Today is the fifth episode in a new series delving into what makes each of us respond as we do to life situations. Understanding ourselves and how others may interpret life through their paradigm will allow us to interact with each other with more love and compassion.   This is utilizing a profound tool call ‘The Enneagram.’ If you have missed any of our past four Friday series, I would recommend going back and listen to them or read the Wisdom Journals.  As a review, the tool that we refer to as the Enneagram (Any-a-Gram) is a circle with 9 interconnected points (Ennea refers to 9 and Gram referring to a drawing).  Check out today’s Wisdom Journal for a representation of it.  I have also included in today’s Wisdom Journal a copy of ‘The Enneagram At-A-Glance’ which was compiled by Suzanne H Eller.  If you would like a PDF copy of it click on the link in today’s Wisdom Journal on our website Wisdom-Trek.com.

I would also recommend a recently released book ‘The Road Back to You’ written by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile.  It is an excellent book about an enneagram journey to self-discovery.

When I discovered the depth of the Enneagram, it opened up a new horizon of understanding of myself first, and also helps me to understand others better. The Enneagram is the most useful tool of this type I’ve encountered for personal growth.  We are exploring this tool in detail, and I would recommend also reading the Wisdom Journal for each Friday to see the diagrams presented each week.  If you have any questions or would like additional resources, please send me a message from the Wisdom Journal page, and I will reply. As helpful as the Enneagram is, keep in mind though, it is still only a tool, and cannot replace or usurp the precepts that are found in God’s Word.   All decisions and actions that we make in life must be in harmony with God’s precepts.

So the questions for the next several week or months will be:

“Hey, Gramps, why do people act and react to situations and circumstances in life differently?  How can I gain wisdom to better understand myself and others so that I can love, serve, and minister to them on a deeper level?” 
The Enneagram System – The Continuum of the Levels of Development


The continuum is comprised of nine internal Levels of Development—briefly, there are three Levels in the healthy section, three Levels in the average section, and three Levels in the unhealthy section. It may help you to think of the continuum of Levels as a photographer’s grayscale which has gradations from pure white to pure black with many shades of gray in between. On the continuum, the healthiest traits appear first, at the top, so to speak. As we move down the continuum in a spiral pattern, we progressively pass through each Level of Development marking a distinct shift in the personality’s deterioration to the pure black of psychological breakdown at the bottom.